Adventures in collecting Beatles music

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Ever Present Past – Rare CD Single

For some unknown reason this official McCartney CD single (and what a rarity CD singles themselves are becoming!) was pressed and distributed by MPL/Universal/Hear Music in only very limited quantities. Hence it has become extremely rare and difficult to find – even on Ebay. Those that can be found usually go for top dollar. I went along to a local record and CD fair recently (in Parramatta in Sydney) and happened across the one you see here.

Yes, I too had to pay big bucks even at the record fair, but after many years of looking it was the first time I’d ever seen one of these in real life. I’d been searching on Ebay for quite some time but this CD single, when it very occasionally came to light, always sold for much more than I was prepared to pay.

So, when I saw this CD sitting on Beatles’ collector Bruce Hamlin’s stall I was overtaken by the desire to finally get my hands on a copy and have it in the collection.

The song comes from the album “Memory Almost Full”, from way back in 2007….yes, that’s how long I’ve been looking for this one! At the time McCartney also issued a vinyl 45rpm disc of the same track. These seem to be freely available even now and, while nice to have, are proving to be not that collectable – although they do have a unique song on the “B” side. More on this below.

The 45’s therefore are pretty much a dime-a-dozen, whereas the CD single is much more rare.

As I said, I really don’t know why so few were released to the general public. If you know any other details or background to the story please drop me a comment.

OK, a couple of details about the CD single. It comes in a card sleeve, and you can see images of this above and below. The CD itself also has an image printed on it. It is of the girl dancers who feature prominently in the video clip for the song which was shot in an art gallery. There is also an insert for the card sleeve with two images of McCartney on one side taken during the filming of the video, and the song details on the other, along with with a cut-out “Mobius Strip” wrist-band and instructions on how to make one. A completed “Mobius Strip” is the featured image on the the front cover in case you are wondering what one is….

By the way, the vinyl 45 cover is very similar, with the same images and insert, only bigger than the CD version. And the 45 has on the “B” side a different song to the CD. Its a live version of “House of Wax”, recorded at Amoeba Music in Los Angeles, while the CD single has two live tracks: “Only Mama Knows” and “Dance Tonight”, also both recorded live at Amoeba. “Only Mama Knows” was subsequently released on the “Amoeba’s Secret” vinyl and CD singles. So, that makes the other two live tracks kind of collectable too I guess.

After trawling through old posts on your site (which I discovered for the first time earlier today), this was the first post where I was able to say “I’ve got that!”
I’m pretty sure I picked it up from hmv.co.uk when it first came out, for the price of a regular CD single (i.e. a couple of pounds). Just goes to show – you never can tell what’s going to become rare and valuable when it comes to Beatles gear!